Informational post on recovering one hosed RAID 5 array to another RAID 5 array
 

Q: If you own a Buffalo 2 Terabyte domestic-grade RAID server which blows a drive and then throws itself out of the pod bay doors in a pointless display of paranoid failure, how long does it take to copy the data to a new RAID server?

A: 9 days.

There. I knew you'd want to know.

PS This excludes talking to Buffalo tech support, buying 3 different drives only to learn that this unit only actually works with one particularly obsolete drive, banging a motherboard in a new case, adding the 3 good drives plus a bootable one to it, locating software sold in Ukraine that can emulate a virtual RAID array with a virtual failed drive, discovering that a motherboard labeled SATA1 SATA2 SATA3 SATA4 doesn't mean that's the way the system sees them, and other tribulations too numerous to mention. I'll mention the case that bit me. Oh, I'll mention the Windows update that decided the computer needed a reboot, too.

Moral: RAID 0, RAID10, but most of all, hardware RAID.